Italian food & desserts have won the hearts of millions across the world. Find out about some of the most popular items in the cuisine of Italy and their origins in our guide to Italian desserts.
Italy has earned its reputation through a lot of things ranging from sports to cars and interior designing but out of all the things the Italian cuisine is what has gotten the country world wide fame. Of course the soccer team of Italy did win the 2006 world cup but Italian food keeps winning the hearts of millions of people everyday. It has been observed that Italian food is the most popular kind of food when it comes to eating out. This is not just in Italy rather the world at large is inclined towards Italian food for various reasons.
The long and thin boot shaped country has a cuisine that is quite unlike anything that you will be able to find in the world. To the majority of the relatively unaware public pizza and pasta happen to be the symbol of Italian cuisine. It is true that the Naples based pizza dish is the most commonly consumed Italian food along with the different kinds of pasta around the world but Italian cuisine goes a lot deeper than these two items. The cuisine of Italy is extremely rich in food items as well as desserts. The amount of diversity that you will be able to find in the cuisine of the country is overwhelming. Not only does each region contribute with its own special foods and desserts rather they have their own ways of cooking the same food items as well. This is why you will find so many different regional varieties of pasta dishes in Italy.
When we analyze the history of the country we see that for the greater part of it the country was divided into separate regional states. Furthermore many parts of the country were inhibited by foreigners like the French. In 1861 the county was united and the Italian cuisine that we know of today was for the first time formalized. Hence we see that it contains a lot of foreign influences in terms of the ingredients that are used as well as the way the food is prepared.
The delicious treats from different regions
The toe in the map of Italy is formed by the region of Calabria. This region is famous for its delicious spicy salami. Naples is the city famous for introducing the world to pizza as well as mozzarella cheese. The region is also famous for its sfogliattele which is a popular dessert item. These are basically Italian filled pastries. The Northern areas of Italy are credited with producing some of the most amazing food and dessert items that form part of the cuisine. The popular rice dish risotto originates from the Northern areas of Lombardy and Piedmont. Some of the other items originating from the area are parmesan cheese, tortellini, mortadella, lasagna, Bolognese sauce and balsamic vinegar.
The thin crust pizzas have originated from the city of Rome where they used pecorino and offal as the main ingredients. Sardinia is credited with pecorino where as Sicily has a number of delicious seafood items to its credit. Gelato ice cream and granite which is a delicious semi frozen dessert originate from the area as well.
